Welsh study finds that NHS violence costs £6 million a year |
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Published
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Fri, 23 Sep 2005 11:05
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A new study has found that NHS staff in Wales deals with an average of 22 cases of violent or aggressive behaviour each day. More often than not nurses, midwives and health visitors are the helpless victims of this violent behaviour.
The Wales Audit Office study estimated that this violence was costing the exchequer about £6 million a year. The study found that even though steps taken by NHS to find a solution to this vexed problem was praiseworthy, a lot more needed to be done. The Auditor General for Wales, Jeremy Colman admitted that the ramifications of the problem could be worse since there was a very high level of underreporting.
"Improving staff safety is already a high priority for both NHS trusts and the Welsh Assembly government. But improvements need to be made to the handling of incidents, the provision of training and inter-agency working, so that NHS staff in Wales can continue to carry out the vital work they do, without fear of intimidation and attack," Colman said. The report looked at violence in 15 Welsh NHS Trusts and this violence was found to be inflicted upon by people from outside the health sector like patients or their relatives.
The Welsh health minister Dr Brian Gibbons has taken serious note of this report and said that this behaviour will not be tolerated, "Every year the health service in Wales helps hundred of thousands of people who are well behaved and respect the hard working staff. I would encourage everyone to help us bring an end to this needless and upsetting violence and aggression from a small minority of people for the benefit of both patients and staff," he said. Colman said that the main aim of the report was to assess whether authorities were adept at handling this situation.
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